


Sometimes The Heart Sees What Is Invisible To The Eye

by moprocrastinates



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AT THE CAR WASH yeaahhhh, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Harry Potter, art teacher!Clarke, hi i hate that i wrote this, idk what the hell bellamy does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moprocrastinates/pseuds/moprocrastinates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke hates her best friend. </p><p>Really. She does.</p><p>Seriously. </p><p>It's just-- what kind of person wears <i> that </i> to a kids’ fundraiser?</p><p>|| or, Clarke's in love with Bellamy, he doesn't know, and she's more than a little pathetic. ||</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes The Heart Sees What Is Invisible To The Eye

**Author's Note:**

> So there's that saying that a writer should write what they know, right? Well, I got my car washed at Drug Mart the other day by this soccer club, and, well... this was the product a few hours later.
> 
> Now, I've never actually participated/been injured at a club-sponsored car wash, but if I had, I would probably be the one to fall on my derrière, too.

Clarke hates her best friend. 

Really. She does. 

Seriously.

It’s a beautiful Saturday in the middle of April, not a single cloud in the sky, but the sun is bearing down more than it has before, scorching the grass and making the pavement sizzle when the cool water touches it. It’s the kind of day where if one looked close enough, they could see the heat rise from the pavement, and the lack of a breeze makes it all the hotter. 

The drugstore parking lot she’s holding her art club’s fundraiser in is filled with cars, mostly parents of her kids, but it’s wonderful all the same. Her kids are delighted-- they’re nervous but giddy, chattering amongst themselves and laughing under the heat of the sun, and while one of them nearly broke his arm in excitement when the first car pulled up at two minutes to nine, it’s been going pretty well. She’s managed to keep them relatively under control (despite being art club kids, they’re a little wild), fully hydrated, and Clarke’s looking forward to attending the art museum next month with their profits.

Thankfully, she’d also managed to rope Octavia, Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Jasper, and Miller into helping her with her rowdy kids, and within the first few minutes, she could already tell they were a hit— Jasper’s the natural comedian, his flailing limbs still never failing him and he makes the shyest girl in class laugh with her classmates when he accidentally smacks himself in the face with a soapy rag and proceeds to wail about his stinging eyes. Monty and Miller are the composed duo, sliding easily into conversations with the kids, but more and more crowd around them when their flirting turns into a full-on water fight, which ultimately turns into a club-wide water fight. 

She loves them for it. 

Raven has wrangled Clarke’s most anger-prone child, Tara, into learning how an engine works. Clarke has never seen Tara’s eyes so wide and eager, so calm and thoughtful, and it’s all due to Raven’s careful and gentle coaching. Octavia is darting around, hauling buckets of soap back and forth, and she’s popular simply for the fact that she’s small and refuses to let Bellamy hold anything heavy. By the end of hour one, she has a tiny army of five following her around, refilling buckets and telling boys that “girls can carry just as much as them, thank you very much.” 

During the last hour, it seems that the kids are pleased with their profits, having had a slower time during the afternoon. They run around, shooting each other with soap and water, getting soaked and darting in between the long line of cars to avoid waterfights. They’re having a grand old time, and Clarke is pleased, but—

What kind of person wears _that_ to a kids’ fundraiser?

She herself is dressed in a pair of shorts, flip flops and a shitty baseball tee, the most covered-up of her friends (what if one of her students’ parents wandered by?) despite the heat. Sweat is clinging to her back and face, making her shiny, and she’s dreaming of a shower.

But.

There should be something against people wearing sinfully tight t-shirts, she thinks as Bellamy strolls past her, one hand holding a bucket and the other held tight by Clarke’s favorite (and smallest) student, Julia. 

When he’d shown up today, she’d choked on the water she’d been drinking, and Raven had had to slap her on the back as she coughed, and promptly _beamed_ as Clarke wheezed. 

“I fucking hate you,” she’d said to Raven seconds before Bellamy was there, immediately concerned with her getting air. Raven smirked before darting away.

Bellamy’s in a white t-shirt and shorts, which stand out beautifully against his tanned skin. It’s doing wonders for her sanity (not) every time he laughs or is shot with water (which happens more often than not)— his abs become all the more prominent, and it is taking everything in Clarke not to drool. 

So, she hates him on principle. 

But she still can’t help scowling at the women who gawk at him from the safety of their cars. Some of them are even her students’ parents.

She wishes she could ogle herself.

“Clarke!” Bellamy calls as he sprays down a parked Mercedes. “Can you bring me another sponge and a bucket?” 

She’s half-tempted to give some smartass remark, tell him that he’s got working arms and feet, but Bellamy’s not looking at her anymore— he’s leaning forward and beaming at the woman in the car, one of his sinfully lovely hands resting on the door. 

Clarke squints and then almost immediately scowls. 

It’s Echo, his ex-something.

She isn’t really sure what they were, but Echo’s smile is bright enough to rival the sun, and Bellamy’s winking and laughing and Clarke’s stomach just clenches.

So, it’s back to scowling again.

Echo came to quite a few of the Friday night dinners that the Delinquents held together, showing up in a low-cut dress, high heels, and a full face of makeup, a stark contrast from Clarke, whose hair was often in a messy bun and wore her cleanest painting t-shirt and sweats combo. Echo had clung to Bellamy’s arm, often making little inside jokes that no one but them understood, and she fought anyone on anything, from topics like the use of bookmarks to politics to whether or not Dumbledore was a bad guy. 

_Like you didn’t try to dress up and impress him, too,_ Clarke tells herself, cringing at the memory of her stomping through the doorway of Octavia’s house, hair curled and makeup on, wearing the tightest dress she owned. Of course, literally everyone else knew what was going on, but when Bellamy walked through the door, Echo only paces behind, he’d simply smiled at her, hugged her, and then asked if she was going on a date later.

But there she is, touching Bellamy’s arm with her cat-like nails. 

Touching Bellamy’s arm. 

Touching. Bellamy’s. Arm. 

She knows she shouldn’t even be remotely threatened by Echo—Bellamy and her had broken up about eight months ago—but Clarke can’t help but feel a stroke of jealousy when Bellamy’s smile presents itself to Echo. Echo hadn’t liked Clarke (and had told her in subtle ways on multiple occasions), but there was something about the way he was looking at her that made her stomach churn. 

Fuck. She hates this.

“Can I borrow those?” Clarke asks Tara, not taking her eyes off the two. Tara simply hands over the bucket and sponge without even glancing up from where Raven’s got the hood of a car up. Raven does look over, her brown eyes wide, but then her gaze falls on Bellamy and Echo, and she nods at Clarke as if to say, _Yeah, I get it._

Her feet start moving, and while she’s a little dizzy from the heat, Clarke still feels worse, like she might puke a little, when Bellamy leans in the window to say something quietly to Echo.

“Here, Bell,” she trots over to him, dodging parked cars and kids, and she attempts to have a nonchalant interest in bringing this over to him.

Yeah, okay. What a lie.

But before she can get halfway to him, a spray of water shoots out from behind a small Volvo. “WATER FIGHT!” Julia screams, looking every bit the regal queen leading her soldiers into battle, and her bright green eyes are the last things Clarke sees before she’s completely blasted and caught in the middle of a water war. 

“Guys! Hey!” She yelps, quickly lifting the bucket to use as a pathetic shield, and jerks away from the water. 

Clarke’s moving before she realizes two things: one, she’s going towards a standing puddle, and two, she’s wearing flimsy flip-flops. Her right foot grazes the puddle, and she stumbles and slides. Clarke can feel herself falling backwards, and she braces herself. It’s over.

Damn flip-flops.

She goes down, positioning herself to land flat on her back and curls her hands around the back of her head for protection. In doing so, she lets go of the soapy bucket. The pavement is hot against her back when she hits, a different type of painful burning surging through her. Her head whips back and smashes into the concrete, and Clarke has a second of relief before a waterfall of soapy hot water slams into her. Not even another second later, the bucket hits her in the throat.

It all goes silent around her, and Clarke’s afraid to open her eyes. Pain is everywhere: her back, her face, her throat, her eyes, her hands, her ass. Bubbles cling to her clothing, and she can hear them pop as she attempts to sit up. 

“CLARKE!” Bellamy’s voice is suddenly right over her, and when she looks up, she flinches. The sun’s in her eyes, shining around Bellamy’s head, and there’s a hot burn creeping its way up her arm. Bellamy’s mouth is moving, but Clarke can’t hear anything besides the ringing in her ears. “Are you okay?”

“Oww,” she hisses, jerking her arm away from Bellamy’s hand. Clarke’s not quite exactly sure what the burning’s from: the heat, the landing, the combination of the two, or the fact that her senses are spiked whenever Bellamy’s near. 

“C’mon,” he demands, and waves her concerned students off. “We’ve got to get you cooled and Octavia can check you out. Are you okay?” 

It’s definitely his hands that cause the burn, she thinks as he reaches for her to help her up. Bellamy’s a little frantic as he does, brushing his hands against her body in all the places she hit when she fell. “Should’ve just come and got it myself,” he mumbles angrily to himself when he pulls her upright, and it’s then that she jerks away from him, remembering Echo and his tight abs and stupid tight t-shirt. 

“I’m fine.” Clarke snaps, and Bellamy immediately lets go. But he doesn’t move, just keeps watching her, dark eyes roving over her body and then back to meet her own eyes.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks, and Clarke literally cannot believe herself, the way her heart thuds when she sees the concern in his eyes.

_Stupid, stupid._

“Yeah.”

Bellamy snorts disbelievingly before taking her arm and nudging her towards the front of the drugstore where Monty’s been helping her students with the cashiering. Monty stands there now, his arms holding a towel which she immediately wraps herself in upon arrival. He rolls her sleeves up and applies antiseptic to her scrapes, gently cooing at her when she jerks away from his touching a scratch on her face.

Bellamy waits with her for a couple minutes while Monty cleans her up, but then takes one long look at her, up and down, nods to himself, and begins to stride off.

She can’t help that she feels pathetic— she’s soaking wet, her teeth are chattering, she’s bruised her body and her pride, and her best friend, who she’s been in love with for three years, has no idea she’s in love with him and is therefore flirting with his ex.

What a _peachy_ day.

“I give up,” she murmurs quietly, resigned. Bellamy stops a few paces away and turns to look back at her. 

“What?” He asks. _Shit._

Well, she’d come this far. 

“I give up.” Clarke says, louder this time, her anger suddenly spiking. “Go back to Echo. I can take care of myself.”

“Go back to Echo?” Bellamy’s clearly confused, and Clarke can’t help but want to kiss that dumb look off his face. But she can’t. Because he doesn’t see her in that way. Although she’s never asked, she can tell-- he’s practically running away from her.

“I thought that I would be able to get over you,” She says, and her heart squeezes painfully. She gestures between them, firmly keeping her gaze on the pavement below them because she doesn’t think she can handle seeing his eyes right now, “but when that obviously didn’t happen, I figured, ‘hey, might as well try and see if he’s interested.’ But you aren’t, and that’s okay. I’ll just bury the fact that I love you and we can go back to being friends, okay? I just need some time." Clarke bats off his hands when she sees them in her peripheral. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m perfectly _fine_.” She doesn’t, no, _can’t_ look at his face, see the rejection there.

She clutches the towel around her a little tighter, tucks her chin under a bit, and closes her eyes. Tears prick at her eyes when she hears feet walking away from her.

 _I hope he’s happy with her,_ Clarke thinks, and then hates herself.

She waits there, shivering under her wet towel until every last one of her students is picked up, chatting softly with a very apologetic Julia. No one but Bellamy gives her a wide berth; Raven squeezes her shoulder sympathetically and Miller, not known for showing affection to those other than Monty, actually gives her a one-armed hug, after which she promptly bursts into dry sobs.

“Uh,” Miller’s alarmed, eyes wide, and he whips his head around. “Monty!”

Monty’s there in seconds, gently rubbing her shoulder, and curls her into his side, murmuring kind things into her ear, and Clarke kind of wants to crawl under a rock when Octavia makes her way over.

“Clarke?” Octavia’s voice is quiet, tentative, until she catches a look of Clarke’s blotchy red face. There’s a beat where Clarke can’t read the expression on her best friend’s face, and then Octavia turns away, practically stomping towards her car and Clarke watches her snap at someone over her shoulder. Then Bellamy appears, jogging to keep up with Octavia’s quick pace, and the Blakes disappear into Octavia’s car. 

Clarke’s heart falls into the pit of her stomach. 

Monty drives her home, where she immediately puts on her pajamas and throws her wet clothes into the laundry before pulling out her warmest blanket and putting in the first Harry Potter movie. She’s sad, okay? Admitting her feelings was dumb. Hogwarts makes her feel better. 

John William’s “Leaving Hogwarts,” is playing as Harry steps back onto the Hogwarts Express, and Clarke’s a mess, tears streaking down her cheeks as he waves to Hagrid, when there’s a knock on her door. 

“Coming!” She manages, hurriedly wiping her cheeks, and stumbles over to her door, her blanket wrapped around her like a cloak. Normally she’d glance through the peephole to see her visitor, but she’s too busy attempting to make herself look presentable to check this time around. Her hair’s falling out of its messy low bun, and her red cheeks are bright and prominent, and she knows she definitely looks like she’s been crying. 

When she opens the door, she immediately regrets it. 

Bellamy stands before her in his t-shirt from the fundraiser, shifting on his feet, something Clarke recognizes immediately as one of his nervous habits. His head snaps up from his shoes when she opens the door, and their eyes meet, and Clarke really just wants to crawl back under a rock for the umpteenth time since she confessed. 

So she shuts the door in his face.

But, as she’s rudely reminded, Bellamy’s been her best friend for as long as she could remember, so her attempts to shut the door are thrown to the wind when he jams his foot in the way. 

She lets go and darts to her couch. _I’m not going to talk first,_ she thinks, feeling her anger beginning to bubble below the surface.

Clarke hears him take slow, measured steps into her apartment, and she fixes her gaze on the screen. 

“You’re watching Harry Potter?”

His voice is low, quiet, and wrecked, and she’s angrily aware of how her body instinctively responds by tightening up, her breathing becomes shallow, and her heart races.

“Mhmm.” 

She feels him sit down next to her, pressing close enough that she can feel the heat radiating off of him, and Clarke’s counting the number of technical producers to distract herself when he speaks again. 

“You always watch Harry Potter when you’re sad.” Bellamy notes, this time angling his body towards her, running a hand through his messy hair. 

“I know.” Clarke says.

There’s silence again for a beat or two, and then she erupts. 

“Of _course_ I’m fucking sad!” Clarke snaps, tossing her blanket to the ground when she stands up. “I’ve been in love with you for three fucking years, and I know we were best friends, and I know I shouldn’t have fallen for you, I know I shouldn’t have told you because then we wouldn’t be having this stupid fight and I would have you back, but, hell, Bell, you acted like my feelings didn’t even matter to you!”

“Matter to me?” Bellamy growls, rising from the couch to tower over her. “Wha— you think your feelings don’t seriously fucking _matter_ to me? Christ, Clarke, they’re all I fucking think about!”

She stops her next sentence before it comes out, and she’s breathing hard. “What?” It comes out a little harsher than she intended, but she figures the situation calls for it. 

“You’re my best friend,” Bellamy’s pleading angrily with her now, and she can see the beginning glimmer of frustrated tears in his eyes. “I’m constantly stuck on you. I want to know what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, if everything’s okay. I want to know what you think late at night, when the world’s asleep but you aren’t.” He pauses to run a shaking hand through his hair. “You organized the whole fundraiser all by yourself, and roped me and our friends into doing it, like I wouldn’t have done anything you asked of me anyway. You show up in my ratty old baseball tee from last year’s league and those ridiculous short shorts, and I’m already trying not to lose my fucking mind when you laugh at the waterfights. And then you’re great with the kids and I really can’t believe you didn’t see me mooning over you the entire time. And then you got wet,” his jaw clenches. “And _hurt,_ and it was all I could do not to scoop you up into my arms and take you to my apartment to inspect you properly.”

She only gapes at him.

“Clarke,” Bellamy huffs, well, more like sighs, and to Clarke it sounds resigned. “I have been in love with you for _years_ , and today, when you told me you loved me, all I could think about was you and your eyes and your hair and your laugh and my crappy t-shirt and how _glad_ I was that I told Echo that you were the one for me.” His eyes finally stop roving around, and when they meet hers, Clarke feels her heart stutter. “O’s been telling me for months to tell you how I feel, and today was the last straw for her. She said she couldn’t see you upset anymore, and if I didn’t tell you, she would.”  


Clarke wonders if she’s breathing. 

“The point is,” Bellamy says, “that I love you, I’m _in_ love with you, and I don’t want you to get over me. In fact,” he smirks a little, “I would prefer it if you were under me, but I’m good with either.” 

She strides towards him and smacks his arm. “You asshole,” Clarke hisses, and when his face falls, she yanks him down to meet her lips. 

Clarke’s more than a little angry, her kiss becoming almost a bruising force, but Bellamy’s slowing her down, moving his lips against hers like he has nowhere else in the world to be ever. His hands cradle her face, his tongue slips into her mouth, and she sighs.

When they break apart, Bellamy doesn’t go far. He just rests his forehead against hers, still cradling her face in his hands, and Clarke kisses the tip of his nose for good measure. 

“I love you too,” she murmurs softly, and Bellamy sighs; it’s a breath of relief, and it’s the best thing she’s heard in a while. “And I want your t-shirt.” 

He blinks. “My baseball tee?”

“No, the one you’re wearing right now.” 

She finds it on her floor the next morning, puts it on, and smiles to herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my story! Comment and/or click that 'kudos' button if you like/love/felt something about it. 
> 
> My [tumblr.](http://www.moprocrastinates.tumblr.com)


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